Amazon EC2 For IRC?

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Posted by harget, 09-23-2011, 10:38 PM
I have been looking for a cloud provider to use for my irc client. Does anyone know what the adverge costs of a small instance of a EC2 cloud is? How much per IP? rdns available? 256mb ram, 5gb space, 5-25gb bandwidth.
Posted by CH-Shaun, 09-24-2011, 11:49 AM
You'll find that a reserved instance will be cheaper in the long term for such low requirements. The Micro Instance starts from $54/year and I think that this would be ideal in your situation. rDNS can be setup and IP's are $1 each per month from memory.
Posted by harget, 09-24-2011, 05:41 PM
Is it $54 per year or month? $54/yr seems to good to be true. What are the bandwidth/specs of the instance for micro?
Posted by paperwastage, 09-24-2011, 07:00 PM
the $54/yr is a yearly fee to "reserve" one instance of micro on EC2 then, everytime you switch on your micro, you get billed a cheaper rate of $0.007/hour instead of $0.02/hour you break even after 6 months of continuous 24/7 usage Also, Amazon gives you a year of free micro instances if you haven't used EC2 before. aws.amazon.com/free/ Micro Instance 613 MB memory Up to 2 EC2 Compute Units (for short periodic bursts) EBS storage only 32-bit or 64-bit platform I/O Performance: Low API name: t1.micro
Posted by harget, 09-24-2011, 07:18 PM
I'm comfused now, i'll be running znc, so it keeps me online 24/7??? So it'll be more?
Posted by paperwastage, 09-24-2011, 07:52 PM
the reserved instance fee of $54/yr is like a membership fee that gives you a discount over the spot rate. You could pay $0.02/hour for however long you run the micro instance or $54/yr PLUS $0.007/hour for however long you run the micro instance
Posted by quantumphysics, 09-24-2011, 10:08 PM
You pay per hour you're online. That's it. Simple. I use EC2 for an IRC instance. 02:07:50 -!- Irssi: Uptime: 313d 2h 13m 36s Micro On-Demand Instances Micro $0.02 per hour 0.02 * 731 = 14.62 $15/month plus any bandwidth used per-GB RDNS is extra (free w/static ip, requires some forms submitted), static IP is extra (by default your IP is a NAT'd one that will change on restart). Last edited by quantumphysics; 09-24-2011 at 10:12 PM.
Posted by harget, 09-24-2011, 10:18 PM
Thanks, that is cheap. Do you by chance know if they block ports?
Posted by quantumphysics, 09-24-2011, 10:21 PM
You are NAT'd - ports are all "blocked" by default except for 22. You can log in to your EC2 console and manually add firewall exceptions inbound (based on source IP or general). I was able to connect directly to freenode on 6667, so I don't think so also, as for stability.. -!- idle : 47 days 3 hours 51 mins 29 secs
Posted by harget, 09-24-2011, 10:36 PM
Also, how much is per gb? Is the firewall theres or iptables? Do they have ipv6? ZNC has to bind to a port, thats why I asked.
Posted by quantumphysics, 09-24-2011, 10:48 PM
Firewll is their own, iptables is separate and you can set it up. IPv6 - no
Posted by harget, 09-24-2011, 10:54 PM
Thanks a bunch.
Posted by quantumphysics, 09-24-2011, 10:56 PM
just if youre curious - firewall UI looks like http://i.imgur.com/uKVpq.png, bottom is the interface for allocating a static IP
Posted by dediserve, 09-26-2011, 05:22 AM
To be honest, if you need a 24/7 online server, amazon is still much more expensive than most other cloud options.. Shop around would be my recommendation
Posted by harget, 09-26-2011, 11:37 PM
What are some good companies to use then for IRC?
Posted by sentabi, 09-27-2011, 12:57 PM
linode slicehost prgmr
Posted by tchen, 09-27-2011, 01:18 PM
Just a note, slicehost users are being transitioned to Rackspace Cloud Servers. As for the ipv6, I'd be interested to hear if any other cloud provider actually has it right now. VoxCloud is the only one I know (by request), with Rackspace having it in the pipeline. This does beg the question, why use a cloud for IRC? The whole point of a relay chat system is to have multiple heads so your network is relatively resistant to node deaths. Edited: Ah, nevermind that last bit - I didn't realize what the ZNC was.

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